Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an angular bevel gear drive for the drive of, or the drives in, agricultural implements, having an input shaft and at least one output shaft, with the input shaft and/or at least one output shaft being associated with a torque measuring device.
There are prior art angular bevel gear drives for driving, or for the drive of, agricultural implements for distributing or diverting the torque.
In the case of agricultural implements driven by the tractor, the power of the tractor should, on the one hand, be used in an as optimum way as possible and, on the other hand, overloading of the implement or individual functional areas of the implement as well as of the tractor is to be avoided in order to prevent any damage from occurring.
So far, when the torque was exceeded, slipping couplings or disconnecting couplings were used to provide protection against overloading. It requires a great deal of skill and experience on the part of the tractor driver to operate the unit in such a way that the tractor power is used up to its limit without causing any reaction on the part of the couplings.
A reaction on the part of the coupling means that the vehicle may have to be stopped in order to eliminate any interference and to effect re-connection.
It is therefore the object of the invention to provide a device which is integrated into the driveline for driving an agricultural implement and/or individual functional areas of the implement, which permits optimum use of the performance of the tractor/implement combination without the need for interruption to eliminate any interference and which is simple and robust to be able to withstand the loads occurring in agricultural applications, and especially dirty conditions.